Why Innovation?: Greatness is more than profit

Mette F Johansen

Denmark has never been short of philanthropists. The great entrepreneurs behind Carlsberg and AP Møller-Maersk established a trend for helping the people that continues to this day.

However, few can compare to Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, who is truly one of our time’s greatest entrepreneurs. He wants to tackle the pollution of private motoring and help us all use sustainable energy. Musk cares about us all; he’s truly in it for more than commercial reasons.

Connection is key
Earlier this year Havas Media released a study of how people connect to brands. The study showed that 74 percent of the brands of today could disappear, and people wouldn’t care.

The same study shows that 71 percent of us consumers want to help a brand to promote their products or services, if it is a good cause that will help our or others’ well-being.

Be meaningful
Havas Media argues that revenue can rise by 46 percent and productivity by 100 percent by injecting meaningfulness into the equation. It will give you a distinct advantage over companies only in it for profit.

Havas suggests three pillars of meaningfulness.

Marketplace: the value goes way beyond the product in itself.

Personal well-being: the brand helps us in our everyday lives, and helps us look good and be well.

Collective well-being: the brand and products makes a difference for my community and the people I care about.

A reason to be
As I have argued before, companies have to have a why – a reason to be. And these are the arguments for why you should care about finding it.

Because when you do, you will not only get a better business out of it – you will get a great business out of it.

This post was inspired by an article in Børsen on October 28 by Martin Jes Iversen and Camilla Sløk from CBS.

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